Go Home
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: In 2006, Mickey asks Rose and the Doctor if he can come with them and they say yes. In 2012, Adam asks Rose and the Doctor not to leave him with a chip in his head and they say no. In 2038, someone steps into the burnt ruins of the Powell Estate...
1. Prologue

Go Home

_Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.  
-Ambrose Redmoon_

* * *

_prologue_

Nighttime, London, 2006. Christmas Day, to be exact- there was ash falling from the sky and the world had changed forever. Everyone around them- all the people wrapped up in winter coats, all the people who'd just faced certain death- seemed perfectly happy, but that was because, Mickey thought, they didn't _know_. They didn't know how much danger they all were in, how much danger had passed them by, and that what was settling on the ground wasn't snow but substance from an alien spaceship. If they did that thing that kids did, and stuck out their tongues to taste the snow- they'd get a shock. The snow would be dust.

Mickey's world had changed forever long before today. He couldn't pinpoint the exact time and place -sometime in the year 2005, back when things had been saner. Maybe it had changed when a tiny, insignificant department store had blown up in 2005 London- or maybe it had changed with the words _You're not invited._ Maybe his driving his then girlfriend to see some strange bloke with a website had been the beginning of the end, or perhaps the short conversation that went _Thanks. For what? Exactly. _had been it.

Either way, it didn't matter now, because it looked like things had come full circle.

"Well," the Doctor said, as Rose grinned excitedly and looked around at them all, "we'd better be off. Lovely to see you all again." He clapped his hands together enthusiastically, and turned to Rose. Rose turned to Mickey, and smiled at him. "I'll see you sometime, alright? I'll be back for next Christmas, I _swear_." She hugged him and then let go of him, then gave Jackie a hug, and then stepped into the TARDIS with the Doctor.

Mickey ran forward and grabbed the door before it shut.

"Oi," he said helplessly. "I want to come with you."


	2. a long way down the road

AN: If you fancy knowing the backstory about Mickey, Trisha, and Clive's family- that was in a fanfic series called _Turn of the Earth _which was posted on LiveJournal. (see profile) But you don't have to have read that to make sense of this. :)

Go Home  
_chapter one- a long way down the road_

He sat in the console room, and let it all dawn on him. Would it occur to Jackie to inform his family where he had gone? He'd have thought so, considering what she had been through last year, but...you never knew, with Jackie.

And where were they going? Would they want to go off on their own, and leave him to do his own thing? What could he do? What if he ended up in trouble and the Doctor gave up and dropped him back on Earth? Or worse, left him on some planet somewhere with no hope of rescue?

No...he wouldn't do that. Rose would stop him. Wouldn't she?

Maybe he'd made this decision way too quickly. He hadn't thought about it. But, he figured, he wouldn't have thought about it if he _hadn't_ stepped forward and stopped the doors. He'd just have moped about it, moped about throwing away yet another chance.

In came Rose. He wondered where she'd been. How many rooms were in here, anyway? Because if you could fit anything in here...there might be a swimming pool, a cinema, or a football pitch. Or perhaps not.

Rose held something out to him- it was a mobile phone. "Here," she said.

"What's that for?"

"Well, most people use it for phoning or texting," she said, grinning cheekily at him like she always did. "It's set up so you can phone anyone, whatever time or place you're in. So, I thought...if you fancied telling anyone where you'd gone, that you were gonna be travelling for a while..."

He couldn't stop himself from smiling at the words _gonna be travelling for a while_. He didn't really know why, though, because although he wouldn't have admitted it to her in a hundred years, he was a little...wary.

Scared.

"Thanks," he said, and she hovered around him while he held the phone and pressed buttons. Should he text his mother, or ring her? Texting would be easier. And his older brother, Josh- he was a DJ up in Slough and Mickey hadn't seen him for months- maybe he'd better text him as well. And then...what about...

What about his father? No _way _was he going to text him.

He carefully typed out his messages, making sure not to give out too much information. _rose came back for xmas, she's asked if i want to go travelling with her. i said yes, so i'm off & i'll be back sometime later._

That would do.

As he sent his explanations (goodbyes?) to various people- his mother, Shireen (who he knew would manage just fine without him, but anyway), Maggie and Thomas Finch, and some others- he was aware of Rose watching him carefully. He didn't know why. Maybe she was observing how odd he looked, here in _her _world. Or something.

As he was writing the final text message, Rose wandered over to him, possibly thinking it was about time she got her phone back. She looked over his shoulder.

"You're writing to Trisha?" she asked, a note of faint annoyance in her voice.

"Yeah. I thought she might want to know." He paused before saying the next thing, afraid of screwing up. "We _were _friends." Rose bit her lip and looked perhaps a bit relieved...and at that, Mickey was quite relieved as well.

"We should be friends," Rose said quietly.

"Yeah," Mickey said, and he finished with the phone and handed it back to her. "We should."

They looked at each other for a good few seconds, neither of them sure what to say, and then the Doctor came in.

"All out for Pluto," he said cheerfully. "Wrap up warm."

* * *

Within a couple of seconds Mickey was standing on Pluto.

It was _so weird_. It was all icy, and very, very cold- but behind him there were people.

At that his thoughts stopped dead. People. _People_. Not humans, just aliens. And he was right here, among them, and he wasn't scared.

Just...sort of awed. Because space was _big- _he could faintly remember a line of dialogue from his old _Hitchhiker's Guide _CDs: _You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemists, but that's just peanuts to space._ He felt very, very small- but at the same time he didn't and couldn't, because he'd _had_ all his moments of feeling small already, and those moments were in the past. Behind him. He was going to...

Going to...

Just look at things? Just travel? Or was he going to eventually end up with responsibility on his shoulders, like Rose had? Would they want him to save people? Save planets? Because he couldn't do that. Could he? He was afraid again, and shook it off. This was just culture shock.

The Doctor and Rose had been browsing the market stalls behind him- Rose kept glancing in his direction, though. He glanced back at her, and she gave a smile and then carried on with her shopping, holding the Doctor's hand.

Mickey folded his arms across his chest and scratched his feet across the ice. It left a line, and he wondered if maybe he should etch _MICKEY WOZ ERE _on the surface of Pluto.

"Oi, what you doing still on your own?" Rose approached, holding a box. "Don't you want to buy anything?"

Mickey turned around to look at her. Night had fallen when they'd arrived, but someone had only just turned a load of multicoloured lights on near the marketplace, and he had to blink. "Got no money."

"They don't do money- you gotta swap things instead. I swopped two chocolate bars I got back home for this." She opened the box- inside was a beautiful pink necklace. A beautiful _Plutonian _pink necklace. "They don't have chocolate here, not much. You'd think they would, wouldn't you? Anyway, you oughta buy something, 'cos you didn't bring anything with you."

This was very true.

"Um. Alright. I'll need clothes."

Rose tilted her head in thought. "Maybe...maybe we could go back to Earth for that. You could go to your flat and grab a load of stuff. Like what I did. Once we're done here, I mean."

Mickey glanced at the Doctor; he was in the middle of an animated conversation with a man with two heads.

"Yeah. Maybe. I'll probably need my passport, and stuff."

"Yeah. I'll ask the Doctor in a minute, alright?"

She opened up the box and took the necklace out, and tried to put it on. But the clasp, since it was made on Pluto and not on Earth, was unfamiliar to her and she dropped in on the ice.

"Here-"

Mickey picked it up, and Rose turned around and he put it on for her. The clasp was weird, and too complicated, but by some rare stroke of luck he got it.

"Aww, thanks, Mickey."

Mickey looked up then, and saw the Doctor standing there on a patch of black ice. He didn't look annoyed, or even jealous- not how the other Doctor would have looked- instead he looked like he was going over all his emotions and sorting them out, trying to _decide_ if he felt even a little jealous.

And Mickey thought, _Do I know this guy_?

* * *

Back in the TARDIS, Mickey took up his seat in the console room again, but Rose wasn't having it.

"I haven't shown you round yet! Come on. You've gotta see everything."

She dragged him from room to room. The wardrobe ("See if there's anything you like in there,") to the very much existant swimming pool, to the kitchen with a fully stocked fridge. That was where all three of them- for the Doctor joined them- ate. The other two had some weird, exotic blue stuff, and Mickey had a cheeseburger. Rose tried to persuade him otherwise, but he had always been picky about food.

When Mickey had almost finished the burger, the Doctor pointed at it.

"That," he announced, "was from the 30th centuary equivalent of a fast food restuarant. And that wasn't part of a cow you just ate."

Mickey felt rather sick, but he put the rest of the burger down and said. "Right."

And then he ate the rest of it, because he'd have been annoyed with himself otherwise.

* * *

They did stop off back at Earth, though. Rose asked the Doctor after they'd eaten, and he said, "Yeah, all right, then."

Mickey looked out at the council estate. _His_ council estate, he thought. Worn-down and battered and covered in graffiti but full of a load of lovely, if slightly apathetic, people.

Home.

It was night-time, and the stars looked very different now he was back on Earth.

"What day is it?" he asked the Doctor.

"Boxing Day. Not for much longer, though, it's nearly midnight."

"Right. I'll go get my things, then." He didn't ask them to come- he didn't know why. He stepped out of the doorway of the TARDIS, and headed off across the street. The street lights were on, and one of them was blinking on and off. And it was cold, but not as cold as Pluto.

He could feel their eyes on him. He turned the corner and headed up to the flats. He wandered up the dimly lit staircase, and took his flat key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

His flat looked just like it always did. A tip. He picked his way across the floor, and into his bedroom- he found a backpack in the wardrobe and started throwing things into it. Clothes, underwear, toothbrush, razor, books, socks...DVDs? CDs? Maybe a couple. His PSP and accompanying games. His laptop...

He stared at the laptop as he put it in his bag. The website was on there, and anyone in the world could load it up and go to the editor and continue it's work. Maybe he should give it back to Clive's family, if they wanted it. But Maggie was probably too busy to update it on a regular basis, and Thomas...

...well, maybe him. Either way, it wasn't going to be his anymore.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Okay, Rose, I'm coming," he called, and he slung his backpack over his shoulder and opened the door. But it wasn't Rose. It was Trisha.

Mickey stopped in his tracks and stared at her- he simply wasn't expecting this, because they'd split up. If, indeed, they'd ever been a couple. They were just friends...and he felt quite bad about leaving a friend, but...

But...

He'd said goodbye to her already, and he'd never said goodbye to Rose.

"Are you off, then?" she asked quietly.

She knew. How could she have known? She must have seen Rose and the Doctor and the TARDIS from her window. Or something.

"Yeah. I am. I'm sorry."

"S'alright," she said. "I thought you would go..." But she trailed off there, and Mickey looked at her- and found himself digging about in his pocket for the flat key.

He handed it to her,

"Um. This is for you," he said to her. "Until I come back."

"Yeah," Trisha said softly. "Until you come back."

He left, and now he felt _her _eyes on him. All the way down the stairs, and out of the door, and down the darkened street and to the blue box.


	3. take me to your war

Go Home  
_chapter two- take me to your war_

"You took a while," Rose greeted him.

"Yeah. Got all my stuff, though." He dropped the backpack on the floor, and then something occured to him. "Where do I sleep?"

"Pick a room," the Doctor said brightly. "Any room. You can sleep in the library if you want."

"Nah, I'll pass on that, thanks."

"C'mon, I'll find you a room," Rose said. And she lead him through the corridors again, until she came to a plain white door.

"This is my room," she said. She pointed to the one opposite. "And that one's yours. There. Simple as that."

"Fair enough," Mickey said, and let himself in. His room was all blue- blue sheets and blue carpet and blue ceiling.

"The Blue Room," Mickey said thoughtfully.

"D'ya like it?" Rose asked.

Mickey thought of his flat. He wasn't quite sure. "Yeah, I like it."

* * *

They stopped off next at some point in the future, on the day that Big Ben Mark II finished construction. Mickey yelled up at the builders, "I liked the old one better!" and felt odd for doing it.

Then they asked him to chose where they went next.

"Urr...anywhere. I'm not bothered."

"Oh, go on," Rose said.

"Are there any rules about this?" He was thinking about finding out what had happened that time when they'd opened up the TARDIS with a truck and Rose had left again...but he was sure he wouldn't be able to.

"Yeah," the Doctor said. "No going back to defining events from your own past." He gave Rose a look as he said this, and she looked back. Sadly.

"Alright, then. How about World War II?"

But at that, for some reason, Rose's depressed look remained, so he tried something else.

"Let's see your planet, then, Doctor. Take us there."

And at _that_, the room froze. Mickey knew instantly he'd done something wrong. Rose lifted her hands up to her mouth very slowly.

"Doctor?" she asked.

The Doctor looked at Mickey. "I can't take you there," he said evenly, "because it's gone."

"Oh," Mickey said stupidly. And then, even more stupidly, "How?" "A war," the Doctor said. "A war you've never even heard of." He said nothing more- Mickey had expected an insult, at least, but it would be a bit hard to insult back, and...

"Let's drop this," Rose said quietly.

The room was silent apart from the humming of the machinery. The Doctor wandered over to the console.

"Right then. Chose anywhere in space and time."

Mickey's head was buzzing with questions. A war. A war with who? Was this war over or not? Was Rose involved?

Was he involved?

Was that what the _Bad Wolf _thing had been about?

"How about..." He wanted badly to say, "How about you take me to your war," but he just couldn't. Because Rose looked upset. "The moon. In the year...three thousand...and three."

"Yeah, that sounds alright," the Doctor said, with a note of probably false glee. "Onto Moon City. Creative name, innit?"

* * *

They went to the moon.

Moon City (apparently it had been named by some politician or other) looked a bit like what a city would look like had it been built on Earth in the middle of a desert. And seeing that Earth wasn't really all that short of cities built in deserts, Mickey had to admit to himself he was a little disappointed.

_No, _he told himself, _not disappointed. Just not surprised, that's all. 'Cos you're always surprised by this stuff, but this just looks normal even though it's not._

So they hung around, and chatted to the locals, and then left again.

"What do you guys _do _all the time?" Mickey asked, when they were back in the console room. "I mean..." He had recieved two odd looks at that. "I mean, don't you ever get bored with just...going and hanging around and leaving?"

"Well, we don't always go and hang and around and leave, but the moon in the year three thousand and three...it's just like Earth." Rose said with a shrug. "And you don't want somewhere that looks like the place you just left."

"Guess not." He missed the estate incredibly all of a sudden, and wondered about asking to see it in a hundred years or so. Just to see what it looked like.

But first, Rose yawned and declared it time for bed.

* * *

Mickey didn't get much sleep. He was trying to get his head around all this. He'd _done _it. In one second he'd changed his entire life. He'd wanted...

...wait, what had he wanted? He'd wanted Rose back, and he had her...but only sort of. Their relationship was over- that much had been obvious (and denied) for ages. Did he want _this_? The moon and stars and stuff? Yes. Would he have been alright without it, in a normal life? _Yes._

He supposed that was the difference between them.

As he turned over and tried to sleep, he heard voices from outside the door. Rose and the Doctor- obviously. He couldn't help it- he went to the door and listened.

"I miss him," Rose was saying. She sounded close to tears. "I keep thinking, y'know, what would Jack think about that or what would he do now...and then I remember he's not here. I just _miss _him."

Jack. Jack. That name sounded familiar...

"I miss him too," the Doctor said, and Mickey could almost see him there with his arm around Rose. "And I promise we'll be able to see him again. But...we can't for now."

So whatever had made the Doctor change and brought Rose back to Earth had robbed the pair of them of their friend as well. That was interesting.

And poor Rose.

* * *

The next day (even though of course it wasn't the next day, owing to the nature of time travel), they stopped off at a beach. A fairly ordinary looking deserted beach, on a planet with an overcomplicated name. It was hot.

Rose relaxed in her bikini.

"You should get your swimming trunks on!" she called to the other two. Mickey was sitting on the sand in shorts and a t-shirt, looking out. He could just about make out an island out there, with multicoloured buildings on it. He took out his mobile and took a picture.

"I forgot to bring swimming trunks," he said. "Would you settle for underwear instead?"

The Doctor was also staring out over the sea.

"You fancy a swim then?" he asked perkily. "The water's hot."

Mickey declined, but the other two spent a good half an hour in the water. They acted like little kids- little kids at the beach. Splashing each other and swimming in circles and yelling at him to get over himself and come join in. Mickey rarely ended up at the beach even on Earth, it was just...after the age of ten, it lost its appeal for him. But this was so different...

...and he was so the same.

Right?

He built a sandcastle, just because he could.

* * *

When he was back in the Blue Room, he emptied the sand out his shoes and wondered if maybe he should keep some. Even though it looked no different from ordinary sand.

He had a good look around the Blue Room- of course he'd looked around it already, but now he opened all the drawers and the cupboards and looked in them. Nothing.

He hung up his clothes and put his CDs and things away. The room felt a bit more like a permanant place to stay now...if indeed it _was_ a permanant place to stay.

He flopped down on the bed and thought about this travelling business. The estate- his untidy flat and the graffiti on the walls- popped into his head once more. Definately his next choice of a place to visit. How often did you get to see what your home looked like in a few hundred years?

Except...

Hang on...

They'd all be _dead_. All of his friends would have died of old age. Blimey. Okay, maybe not a hundred years, then. Fifty or so. Just to see what things were like. If fashion had gotten weird, if mobile phones had shrink even smaller, if cars now ran on vegetable oil, if Jackie had...

Wait...if he saw Jackie there, outside of the year 2006, did that mean Rose she hadn't seen Rose for about fifty years? God, he was confused.

He temporarily put it out of his mind.

He went to find Rose, and found her in her own room. He knocked first, and she let him in.

"Can I borrow your phone just for a second? I want to check the messages, see if anyone replied, you know?"

"Yeah, all right."

He had a look: his brother had answered with _all rite see ya_, his mother with, _yes but please be careful_, Maggie with a simple _Good luck and thanks. _Shireen had not answered, and Trisha, after seeing him, didn't really need to.

He hoped she was taking care of the flat.

He went to give the phone back to Rose, but she was in the console room, sitting against the wall and speaking to the Doctor in a sad voice. It seemed they saved all their depressing conversations for when he wasn't around.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Jack," Rose said. "Remember him?"

"Yeah, I remember him. What happened to him?"

Dead silence. No question about what that meant. He was rather sorry for bringing it up.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "So, Mickey. Where to next?"

Mickey didn't need to think about it too long. "The Powell estate, London." He hastily tried to come up with a good date. Forty or so years in the future ought to do it. "In the year 2038."


	4. so far away from home

Go Home  
_chapter three-so far away from home_

"You sure about this?" The Doctor had his hand on the TARDIS door.

"Yeah," Mickey said, a little warily. "Let me through."

Rose had quickly gone off to apply more makeup, change her wardrobe, and all the other stuff she presumably did when they landed somewhere new- so Mickey was on his own.

"Aren't you coming?" he asked the Doctor.

"No, I'll wait around for Rose. Off you go, then," He took his hand slowly off the door. "Go and see the future."

He walked away then, calling for Rose to hurry up, and Mickey looked up at the door. He decided he couldn't afford to give this a second thought, and he opened the door.

He walked out into a wasteland.

He didn't actually _notice _at first. He thought, okay, the ground feels a bit weird, like I'm walking on rubbish, and that burnt-out building, that never used to be there, what's it doing here, where's my flat, where are all the people, why is everything so black and burnt OH MY GOD...

The Powell Estate was no more. Barely any of it was still standing, and what was had been long deserted. He fought back the panic in his mind. He should go back and warn Rose.

He walked slowly back to the TARDIS. It wasn't actually rubbish he was walking on, it was just...stuff. Bits of wood and nails and brick.

He opened the door.

The Doctor was leaning on the console, doing something with the wires. "That was quick," he said.

"It's _gone_."

"What?" He dropped the wires; they made a fizzing sound when they hit the surface of the console.

"It's gone. It's burnt down. There's no-one there. Don't let Rose see."

"Oh, you won't be able to stop her," he said in a half-whisper.

"Yeah, but _you_ will."

He walked back to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To...look around. To see how it happened!"

"Wait for Rose." His voice was urgent.

Mickey had waited for Rose for a very long time already. "No. Just...tell her what I said. I want to know who did this."

He flung open the door, started walking and kept walking. He headed towards the one building still standing, the one that was blackened and burnt. He expected to hear Rose shouting his name any moment, but he didn't.

It was freezing cold. He wondered if it would snow.

At the foot of the building there was a tent. It was a makeshift one, cobbled together out of bits of wood and wreckage and what looked like an old sofa. Mickey paused. Was anyone in there?

He took another look around. He had suddenly thought _wait what if this happened to the entire world holy shit_- but beyond the estate there were buildings still standing. He could even make out people, a long way off. So it was just the estate. But why?

It couldn't be coincidence. He felt sick.

All of a sudden, someone came out of the tent. It was a man- a man in perhaps his forties, with a beard and dirty clothes. He smelled, and that made Mickey feel worse. He hoped he wasn't going to throw up.

The man noticed him and appeared a bit surprised.

"Oi. Who're you? This is my bit."

"Sorry," Mickey muttered.

But he didn't turn to go- and all of a sudden Mickey thought he recognized him. He didn't know his name, but he knew the face- whoever this bloke was, he used to live on the estate. And that meant maybe this guy knew him too- and he looked like he was considering this right now.

"Don't I know you?" the man asked.

"Um."

"You a Smith kid?"

"Um."

"Oh, right. Lotsa Smith kids. You Mickey Smith's kid? You look like him."

Mickey relaxed a little. "Yeah."

"What's your name?"

Mickey cursed to himself in his head, loudly and fiercely. "Ur, Ricky. Ricky Smith."

"How's your dad?"

This was one of the most freaky things that had ever happened to him, and it was up against some stiff competition.

"He's dead." It was the first thing he could think of to say.

"Aww, that's too bad. I remember him. He dated my sister for a bit."

Dated his sister? God, so he knew this guy quite well, then? Was it one of Trisha's brothers? Her younger brother Sam? Or maybe he was someone else's brother- there had been girls before Rose, hadn't there? They were just faces now, but- there had been a pretty redhead called Jessie- but she only had sisters, no brothers- and Kaylee, who'd been in Rose's class- he couldn't remember _anything_...

He took the plunge. "Are you Sam Delaney?"

"Yeah," the bloke said, looking quite surprised. "Blimey. How'd you know?"

"I...um...my dad mentioned you. Well, not you. He mentioned Trisha, and...said she had brothers."

"Ah, but did he tell you the other thing?"

Mickey's head was spinning. "What other thing?" Had Trisha died in the fire that'd taken out the estate, then? Had...god, had _Jackie_? Was he about to be told something he didn't want to hear? Something that he'd have to tell Rose?

"They blamed _me_ for this," Sam grunted. "For the whole estate burning up. Questioned me. Said I had a history of arson and vandalism...which I did, but hell. It was arson, but it wasn't me. They tried everything to get me locked up, but no proof, so I'm just stuck here. Not allowed to live with Trisha, y'see, or Rob or any of my mates."

_Why? Whywhywhywhywhy what the hell is going on?_

"So, it wasn't you who did this?"

"Course not. Don't read the papers much, do you? They don't know who really did it, they just like to say it was me if anyone asks."

"Bloody hell."

"You can say that again."

The wind blew and shifted a Coke can in his direction. Sam gave it a thoughtful kick.

"I hate this bloody country," he said. "Hate this bloody world."

"Oh."

There was silence, apart from things flapping about in the wind.

"So...what did happen?"

"I was dragged out of bed one night and it was all smoky and hot and I got outside and the whole estate was burning down. You could hear screaming." He shuddered a little.

"Right. Well...thanks."

Dizzy with shock, he was about to walk away when he thought of something.

"Um, Sam. I...my dad knew this woman called Jackie Tyler."

"Oh, yeah. Everyone knew Jackie Tyler."

"Well...he used to talk about her...but he never mentioned if she was still alive or not."

"Oh. Well, she moved out of the estate before the fire happened. Far as I know she's still alive."

Mickey let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "'Kay. Thanks, Sam." He considered asking after some others...Shireen, for example...but he didn't know how suspicious it would look.

Oh, to hell with all that.

"And...sorry for all the questions, but...this girl called Shireen lived on the estate too, is she still alive?"

"Yeah, probably. She moved out before the fire, as well. My sister still knows her."

"Oh. Brilliant. Thanks, Sam."

"No problem, Ricky." But Sam was giving him an odd look, and for a minute Mickey was scared he'd somehow guessed the truth. "You know..." he said thoughtfully. "Did your dad send you here?"

"Yeah. Yeah he did."

"Cause I never saw Mickey after...you know, after Sycorax Day, and my sister always kept quiet about him."

_Sycorax Day. _Good Lord.

"He just...moved on. Scared about aliens, you see."

"Yeah. You're looking for answers, aren't you? There aren't many. My best friend and his whole family died in that fire."

Mickey shivered.

Sam dropped his voice. "I'm not sure about telling you this, to be honest- _I _never got any answers out of him- but I think, Ricky, you ought to go and talk to the Cyberman."


	5. metal and blood

Go Home  
_chapter four- metal and blood_

Mickey walked away from Sam, who had retreated into his tent. He felt giddy. Sick. Terrified. What was he going to do now? Go back to the TARDIS, or carry on and find this Cyberman? Where was Rose? Was she running about looking for him right this minute?

He kept going over that conversation with Sam, and he was disturbed to realize that he was _proud _of himself. Proud of himself for being able to do that, to invent a stupid story about really being his own son and somehow keep it all straight, to actually get some real information. He'd done it _himself_, without the Doctor or Rose. And without going to pieces- and hell, if all this wasn't a good excuse for going to pieces, what was? He felt like he'd proved something to himself.

He wandered on. He passed countless places that had meant things to him, and it was horrible, seeing them all dead. The swings. The bit kids used to use for skateboard stunts. The pointless and rather dangerous hole tucked away near one of the buildings, hidden in the grass- in fact, that hole was still there. The residents of the estate had called it the Useless Hole.

He went forward and had a look. So all this time and no-one had filled it in. It was stupid. A grown man could easily fall in that hole and get stuck in there.

Still, no-one lived here anymore. Or not many.

He knew why he was remembering the Useless Hole, and he put it out of his mind.

In the middle of these thoughts, he suddenly saw another tent tucked away in a corner. A proper tent this time, a clean one. Someone else was here.

He paused and went towards it. Whoever it was, he'd be able to ask them questions, and that was something.

"Hello?" he called.

There was no answer, but he didn't want to leave.

"Hello? Anyone in there? I want to talk to you."

Suddenly the flap of the tent shot open and Mickey found himself with a gun in his face. He had never had a gun in his face before, and he was _terrified_.

"Don't shoot! Please! I'm sorry! I just had questions!" When the gun didn't go away he hastily backtracked. "I'll leave, alright? Just please don't shoot!"

The gun was moved away, and Mickey got up, grateful beyond belief. His heart was still beating.

"Right! I'm sorry. I'll go."

"You said you had questions."

The man holding the gun put the gun down, and Mickey got a good look at him. He had black hair- very messy black hair. But otherwise he was a lot cleaner then Sam had been. He was taking care of himself.

"Um. Yeah. I do." He realised he was shaking a bit. "Why did you point a gun at me?"

The man didn't give an answer. "What questions do you have?"

"I ran into a bloke called Sam. He said to talk to the Cyberman. What is he? D'ya know where I can find him?"

The man smirked. "Is that all?"

"No. What happened? What happened to the estate? People died, didn't they? What _happened_?"

The man laughed a bit to himself, and shook his head. "Which question do you want first?"

"Er-"

"First one, then. Snap your fingers."

Mickey hesitated.

"Snap your fingers."

Mickey snapped his fingers. The man gave a sort of insane grin, and his forehead opened up and rusty machinery came out of the hole. The metal was disfigured enough to scratch the man's skin and make him draw blood. Blood dribbled down his face.

Mickey's breath caught in his throat.

"_Ugh_." He couldn't help it. He was staring, fascinated and revolted. "What the hell is that?"

The man shook his head, but then he smiled like the devil.

"This little thing? The result of teenage foolishness. In 2012," he said quietly, wiping the blood off his face with the back of his hand, "it lost me the respect of my parents, and in 2023 it lost me the woman I loved, when I was stupid enough to think she ought to know _the stupidest thing I ever did_. In 2025 she finally left me for good and I never saw her again. I watch the time," he said in a whisper. "I remember the year 200000."

He trailed off and Mickey was scared again.

"What was your other question? What happened here?" the man went on.

"Yeah. What happened here?" _He REMEMBERS the year 200000?_

"It burned down."

"Yeah, I know," Mickey said in frustration. "Who did it?"

"How do you know anyone did it?"

"Sam said it was arson."

"Ah, you've been talking to Sam, then? How do you know _he_ didn't do it? Just because he says so?"

"Um."

"Exactly."

Mickey decided to try something else. "What's your name?"

But the man only smiled and said nothing.

"How'd you get that thing in your head? That's why they call you the Cyberman, isn't it?"

Still nothing, so Mickey walked away. And then he remembered the gun, so he started running instead. He didn't dare look back, but he looked around, and remembered all the places around here where he'd played football or eaten his lunch or...

He almost ran into Rose. A crying Rose.

"What _happened_?" she sobbed, and he tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him away. "What happened? _Are they dead_?"

The Doctor then came into view, and much to Mickey's relief, he took over.

"Rose. Come on." He took her hand. "You can't stay out here."

Rose said nothing else, and the three of them returned to the TARDIS. Rose sat down in the console room, and the Doctor went into the corridor and returned in only a second or two, with tea.

"Here, Rose." He gave it to her, but she didn't drink it.

"Doctor, it's going to be alright isn't it?" she pleaded. "Oh God, please say there's a way to change that. That was 2038, wasn't it? It's not like something way, way off in the future...not like the end of the world..." She shook her head franctically. "My mum..."

The room was silent, and Mickey realised with surprise that the Doctor was looking at him, waiting for him to say something.

"Oh. Rose, Jackie's alright."

"What?" Rose breathed a sigh of relief. "She is? You're sure, Mickey?"

"Yeah. I asked someone if they knew what happened to her, and they said she moved out before the fire happened."

"Oh, thank God." Rose whispered.

"And Shireen's alright too."

"Thanks so much, Mickey." She got up and hugged him like she'd never hugged him before, and he hugged back.

"Now," the Doctor said, once they'd broken apart, "time we got to the bottom of this. Mickey, you need to tell us everything you saw and heard."

Rose drank her tea while Mickey talked.

"I met this bloke called Sam. I used to know him a little bit. Anyway, I didn't tell him my real name, and he told me that the fire was arson, and I should go and talk to the Cyberman."

The Doctor sat bolt upright.

"Is that what he said?" he said in a level, determined voice, and ran for the door.

"Wait!" Rose yelled. "Don't go back out there!"

The Doctor stopped. "Sorry, Rose," he said. "But if...I don't want to think about it...it's impossible..." He was pale.

"Can't you let me finish?" Mickey said. "It was just this man..."

"Just this man?"

"Yeah. He was the Cyberman...'cos he had this cyber-thing in his head..."

Rose gasped and nearly dropped her cup of tea. And the Doctor just froze. He looked..._scared_. Mickey stared at him- he couldn't be scared, that was stupid. That meant the entire world had just turned upside down. How could he be scared? _Why was he scared_?

"Oh my god," Rose said. And again. "_Oh my God_."

"Something to do with you, huh?" Mickey asked. He wasn't surprised. "He told me to snap my fingers and his head opened up. It was horrible."

The Doctor glanced around as if he didn't know which way to turn, what to do.

"Adam Mitchell," Rose whispered.

"Yes, Rose. Adam Mitchell," the Doctor answered. He shook his head.

"Did he...did he do this?" Rose asked, sounding close to tears. "Mickey? Did he do this?"

"I don't know. He sort of said it might have been Sam, but Sam says he didn't do it. And he was sort of insane...he pointed a gun at me and stuff. Um...how d'you know him?"

And Rose told him.


	6. a second chance

Go Home  
_chapter five- a second chance_

All three of them sat glumly in the console room.

"So. Adam burned down the estate to get back at you?" Mickey asked. "Because of what you did?"

"Looks like it," said the Doctor. Those were the first words he'd spoken in ages: he hadn't spoken at all during Rose's story.

"But...how come he wasn't caught?" Rose said. She looked like she'd aged years in the past hour or so.

"It's the year 2038," the Doctor muttered. "There are new ways to avoid getting caught. There always will be."

Silence.

"We have to do something," Rose whispered. "People died, didn't they? Who died?" She looked at Mickey.

"I don't know," Mickey answered. "Dunno any names. Just...people."

Silence again.

"I can take you to Adam," Mickey said. "If you want."

"No," the Doctor said firmly.

"Why not?" Rose asked.

"Because he has a gun," Mickey supplied.

"No, it's not that he has a gun," the Doctor said. "It's that he knows you, Rose. He won't know me, not anymore, but you're not going anywhere near him."

"So...are you?" Mickey asked.

"Yes," the Doctor muttered. "Just to talk. Just to ask..."

"No," Rose said fiercely. "Not without me."

"He could kill you, Rose," the Doctor said, and Mickey felt a chill go down his spine.

"So? The Daleks could have killed me. Or the Siltheen or the Sycorax or _anything_. I can handle Adam."

"No," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "Humans are...they're different. No. What I mean is..." His hand went to his head for a second. "What I mean is, to you, humans are more dangerous then anything. Because humans are vicious and cruel and vengeful. No different from the Sycorax, except you haven't got the hang of space travel just yet. And Adam is a human."

"Not much of one, with that thing he's got in his brain," Mickey muttered, and had a feeling he'd said a stupid thing.

"Rose," the Doctor said, ignoring Mickey's comment, "I promised your mum I'd protect you."

"Yeah, and I promised _myself _I'd protect _you_. Ask him!" she said, and pointed at Mickey. "I would've died to get back when you sent me away! I didn't care if I did long as you were all right! This is a big thing, isn't it?" she went on in a low voice. "This isn't like...something you can solve easily, like we've done so many times. _Is it_?" she demanded.

All the air seemed to have gone from the room.

"No," the Doctor whispered.

"Oi, listen," Mickey said suddenly.

They both looked at him.

"Why don't you go back to before the estate burned down, and remove the thingy from his head then? Then he doesn't have any reason to get revenge on you."

The Doctor sat down on the console.

"Yeah!" Rose said, jumping up. "We have to do that."

The Doctor said nothing.

"Doctor?"

"It's worth a try," he murmured. "But what time...what time would be right? We can't screw this up. We have to get this _absolutely right_." He looked hard at Mickey as he said that.

"Adam mentioned some dates..."

"He did?" The Doctor jumped up. "That helps. What did he say, Mickey? What did he say?"

Mickey struggled to remember. "He...in...lemme think...in 2023 he told his girlfriend what had happened to him. And she left him later, and she wouldn't have done if he...hadn't had that thing in his head in the first place. So if you got to him before he told her anything..."

"Mickey!" the Doctor yelled, making him jump. "You're a genius!"

"Seriously?"

"A bloody genius. That makes things a lot easier. Let's go to 2022!"

* * *

They landed.

"Where are we?" Rose whispered.

"2022. A good time before Adam confesses to his girlfriend. Now listen-"

"I know that," Rose interupted. "I meant _where_. Did we land in his house again?"

"Nope. We're in his back garden. Now listen, Rose...I don't want you to come meet him. Not until I've explained the situation to him. I want you to stay here, alright?"

Rose gave a little sigh. "Alright. But are you sure you're gonna be alright?"

"I'm the Doctor, Rose!" And he did a weird little dance move which, in any other situation, would have cracked them all up. "And I promise to look after Mickey."

"And I promise to look after _him_," Mickey said, eager to keep the tone of the situation relatively light.

"All right," Rose said nervously.

The Doctor smiled at her, and then they both left. Mickey was too nervous, really, to smile and pretend it'd be all right, and he hated it.

"Adam has a nice house," he said hopelessly.

"Yep. Let's go take a look at it!"

They went to one of the windows.

"What we do," the Doctor said, "is we make sure his girlfriend isn't in."

"Why?"

"Because she can't find out about Adam's past. That's the reason he ended up how he did. You remember? One little thing like that ruins so much. We get Adam alone, chuck him in the TARDIS, take him to Satellite Five, fix his head, and return him to Earth five seconds later, or less. Easy."

"Really?"

"Really? No."

They checked the house thoroughly as they could. They saw Adam through a window- he was watching TV. There was no sign of anyone else.

"Ready, Mickey Smith?" The Doctor asked.

"Ready, Doctor." It felt so weird to say that.

They went to Adam's blue front door and the Doctor rung the doorbell. In ten or so seconds, Adam opened the door.

"Yeah?" he asked, looking at both of them in turn. "What d'ya want?"

"Adam Mitchell?" The Doctor asked, and Adam nodded suspiciously. "You don't know me. But I know you. And I've come to help you."

"What?"

"When you were nineteen..." Adam suddenly moved to close the door, but the Doctor was faster and he held it open. "When you were nineteen you did something dumb, as nineteen-year-olds do, and I'm going to give you another chance."

Adam stared.

"What?" he said again.

In answer, the Doctor snapped his fingers. Adam let out a little gasp. Out came the creepy mechanical thing-

-and Adam snapped his own fingers and it vanished inside his head again.

"Do you know the Doctor?" Adam demanded breathlessly.

"I do," the Doctor said brightly.

"You'd better come in. I want to know what's going on."

"Is your girlfriend coming back anytime soon?" the Doctor asked. "That's rather important. She can't know we're here."

Adam looked at him quizzically. "Lauren? She's not due back until gone five."

The Doctor stepped into the house after Adam, Mickey following. "All the same," the Doctor said. "really we need to get you out of the house and to the TARDIS right away. We can't talk for long, Adam."

But Adam seemed to want to talk. "I knew you'd come back," he whispered.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"_You're _the Doctor, aren't you? You're an alien, so you can probably change shape. You're him. And you came back for me."

"Bit hasty, aren't you, Adam?" the Doctor said in a friendly tone. "How do you know _he's _not the Doctor, for example?" He pointed to Mickey, and grinned.

"Oi!"

"Because _you _are," Adam said, ignoring Mickey completely. "You are. You came back for me. And I've been wanting to kill you for years."

"Well, you needn't kill anyone," the Doctor said smoothly, looking Adam right in the eye. "Like I said- we've come to give you a second chance. To get that thing out of your head."

"Oh yeah. A second chance after _ten _years."

"Better late than never," Mickey spoke up lamely. The Doctor shushed him.

"Adam. You need to come with us. You're getting a second chance, and you have to take it. Do you want to carry on like this?" He snapped his fingers, and the metal crunched out of skin once more.

But Adam barely noticed that. He just kept on just looking at the Doctor, and suddenly Mickey realised what he was waiting for. For the Doctor to say sorry.

To apologize for what he'd done. Adam had only been nineteen, after all. God, if you were judged forever for what you'd got up to at nineteen...

But Mickey had no chance to voice any of this, because then the door opened.

* * *

The entire room froze.

"I got off work early!" called a friendly female voice. "Thought I'd surprise you, love!"

Before anyone could do a thing, a pretty young woman walked into the room. She was slightly plump and blonde, still in her work clothes and holding a white handbag. She was smiling...

...but slowly her expression changed.

"_Adam_?" she said in a baffled voice. "Who are they? What's that thing?" She pointed to Adam's forehead. "Adam? What's going on?"

Suddenly Mickey had this feeling that everything had gone to hell, and he wanted to run, but he made himself stand his ground.

"Lauren," Adam whispered. "I have...to explain something."

"Sure looks like it. What's that? What's that in your _head_?"

"_I_ can explain." the Doctor said, stepping forward. "But will you believe it? That's the important thing..."

"Who the hell are you?" Lauren asked, at the same time Adam said, "She won't believe it..."

Mickey wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say.

"And who are _you_?" Lauren demanded, turning to him.

"Ur, Mickey Smith. Nice to meet you." He felt monumentally stupid after saying that.

"Lauren. Come into the living room. I'll tell you everything. You two _stay out here_." Adam said fiercely, and they went into the living room and shut the door and what followed was an extremely long ten minutes.

The Doctor explored the kitchen, somewhat halfheartedly.

"Why did you do it?" Mickey asked.

"Do what?"

"Leave him on Earth with metal bits in him."

The Doctor shook his head, and stared out of the window to the back garden.

"Or was it the other you? Well, I know it was, but...does it still count as you? Cos either way..." But he was confusing himself now. "What'd Adam do to deserve that?"

"He was greedy," the Doctor said, almost to himself. "He was messing about with history."

"Yeah, and you've never done that."

"I've never been greedy."

Mickey so nearly said, "Well, you were greedy for Rose, technically, weren't ya?" But he didn't. And he never would. So instead he said, "You sure?"

"Adam lied and stole and got us in trouble. That's what happened." He was reaching into one of the cupboards, and taking out a jar of coffee.

"Don't steal his bloody coffee!"

"I'm not, Ricky. I'm looking at the label."

"Ha. You called me Ricky. That means you're mad at me."

"Slip of the tongue."

He put the coffee back. At that moment, the door of the living room opened, and Lauren came out, crying a bit.

"Lauren-" Adam yelled after her, sliding on the floor in his hurry. "Lauren, listen."

"You never told me!" Lauren shouted at him.

"I was gonna tell you, eventually!"

"This was an awful way to find out, Adam. You'd been _lying_. I hate lying."

"No, Lauren..."

"Goodbye, Adam," Lauren said bitterly. "My dad will come to pick up my things, sometime. Goodbye."

"_Lauren_!"

But she left, and slammed the door.

Adam paused for a moment, staring at the door. Then, eyes hard, he turned to the Doctor and Mickey.

"You did this," he whispered. "If you'd never turned up...I was doing fine...you _bastard_."

"Adam," the Doctor said calmly.

"We were trying to help." Mickey added.

"You bastard! Every time you turn up, something bad happens! You ever notice that? _I know about you_," he whispered. "I saw a website once. Listed everything you ever did. You've destroyed hundreds of lives, and destroyed mine _twice_. I was going to tell her! _Without your involvement_!"

"You can still come with us," the Doctor said, a note of fear in his voice. "You can still come and we can remove the device, and-"

"And what? I've lost everything already. And now I've lost Lauren, because of _you_!"

Mickey wasn't sure what happened after that. All he knew was that the Doctor yelled to run, and he did, and they got out by breaking a window and getting out to the back garden and into the TARDIS, and Rose stuck her head out at hearing them running across the lawn, and Adam was chasing and he saw her-

"_Rose_! You're still with him! I'll get you too! _You did this as well! You and him!_"

Then they were gone from the garden, and everything was still.


	7. humans in the wreckage

Go Home  
_chapter six- humans in the wreckage_

The Doctor and Mickey leaned against the walls of the console room, both slightly out of breath from the running- and Mickey at least was incredibly shaken.

The Doctor spoke first, and to Mickey.

"So. What happened to that disk I gave you?"

It had been- or rather, felt like- such a long time ago that Mickey struggled to realise what he was talking about.

"Um. Never used it. Never felt right."

"What?" Rose asked. She had gone to the Doctor, was making sure he was alright.

"Gave him a disk once- a virus to wipe all mention of me off the Internet," the Doctor said, gesturing at Mickey. "He never used it."

Mickey was gearing himself up for an arguement, but the Doctor shrugged. "Anyway, it doesn't matter, website or no website he's out to get us. _All because of me._" He said this last with a note of despair in his voice, and Rose looked very worried.

"Doctor?"

"I'm sorry, Rose. It's my fault-" He said that almost in a whisper. Then he looked around at them both. "Well."

"Well what?" Mickey asked.

"Well. Now we have...ooh, three options, I reckon. We can go back to Adam's Tragic Past at a different point and see what we can do and risk making everything worse; we can go back to 2038 and see what difference our actions made; or we can forget the whole thing and go to Mars in the twenty-third century."

"Yeah. Choice number two." Mickey said.

Rose hadn't yet fully recovered from the _All because of me. _"What Adam did, that weren't you, Doctor. You _know _that."

"Oh-" He shook his head. "All down to choices, isn't it? Adam chose, I chose as well. Now you choose- what d'ya think we should do?"

"Go back to 2038," she whispered.

"Then that's what we'll do."

* * *

As soon as they stepped back out into The Powell Estate 2038, Mickey had a horrible sense of foreboding.

"It looks even worse," Rose whispered.

It did. The place was filled with rubbish- it seemed to be basically a dumping ground now- and he couldn't even see any tents.

"What do we-" Rose began, but then she stopped. "Look! Who's that?"

"It's Sam," Mickey answered. It was a slightly different-looking Sam; he looked even dirtier and very annoyed. And he was swearing at them.

"_You lot get out_!" he bellowed, waving his arms. "_This is my damn place_!"

"Sam Delaney?" Mickey asked.

The man stopped there, lowered his arms and came towards them. "Who're you?" he asked, and Rose instinctively backed away from him.

Mickey groaned. It'd be smart to fall back on the old cover story. "Ricky Smith, Mickey Smith's son."

"Oh..." Sam frowned. "You look like him."

Mickey was sure at least one of his companions was stifling a laugh.

"Yeah, and these two are my mates."

Sam looked at Rose then. "You look like...someone, too." he said thoughtfully.

"I never lived here," Rose said quickly.

Sam shrugged. Clearly he wasn't too bothered. "What d'ya want?"

"We want some information," the Doctor said. "About what happened here."

"It burned down." Sam said flatly.

"And who did it? Was it you?"

Sam flinched at the Doctor's stare. "No! It wasn't me! They said it was me, 'cos I used to vandalise phone boxes and that, but it weren't. It could've been anyone but it wasn't me, alright?"

"Alright. So who do you think did it, Sam Delaney?"

Sam looked all around him, took a step or two away, and muttered. "Well, you've probably never heard of him, but I reckon it was this bloke called Adam Mitchell."

"Right," the Doctor said, in a perfectly calm voice. "Why do you think that?"

"'Cause...listen, I told the police this, but they never listen to me, they think I'm nuts...he went to prison couple of years ago, right, for shooting a woman..."

Mickey felt suddenly and violently sick right at those words.

"...and then he escaped, and they never caught him again 'cos they couldn't be bothered. But, right, the woman he shot, right..."

Rose moved towards him, concentrating on each word.

"...she used to live in the estate. I reckon it's all connected. But they don't care, anyway."

Mickey felt like the world, the new burnt-up world, was closing in on him. He said goodbye to Sam in a daze, and Sam didn't really care much, didn't even look to see where they went, and Rose was running ahead, worried, into the TARDIS-

"Who did he kill?" she asked hysterically. "God, what if it was someone we know?" She looked back and forth between Mickey and the Doctor. "What if it was..."

Mickey didn't know what to say. He was too afraid that she was right.

"_What if it was_...?"

Mickey felt a hand on his shoulder. "Mickey boy. Did you bring your laptop along with you?"

"Yeah," he answered, confused.

"Go get it, would you?"

He ran along the corridor, to the Blue Room, and dragged the laptop back with him. The Doctor took it, fished in his pockets for his screwdriver gizmo, and made all the lights flash.

"Don't mind me- don't mind this- just powering it up-"

He turned the screwdriver off, rested the laptop on the console and turned it on. He tapped it impatiently while waiting for it to load up what he wanted. Rose came over.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "I...listen, is it alright if I go back and ask that bloke? Ask him who was shot..."

The Doctor took her hand. "Rose..."

Rose looked at the screen, and Mickey looked at the screen, and he felt his heart plummet.

_Citizens are advised to be on the lookout for wanted criminal Adam Mitchell (pictured below)._

_Mitchell escaped from South London Jail three nights ago. He was placed there in late 2036 for the murder of local woman Jackie Tyler._

Previous  
Next


	8. the selfless and the useless

Go Home  
_chapter seven- the selfless and the useless_

Mickey sat alone in the console room, in the same place he had been sitting for at least an hour. Rose had cried. She had cried and shouted and...

...she _hadn't _screamed that it was all his fault.

That almost made it worse. Because he could deal with what Rose thought of him, but he couldn't deal with what he thought of himself.

Oh god, Jackie was dead. It seemed utterly impossible. Jackie just wasn't the sort of person who ended up dead. She just wasn't. She wasn't the sort of person who'd be shot in cold blood by a vengeful madman. She was Jackie. She was his friend.

The Doctor came in, without Rose, and Mickey jumped to his feet.

"We have to save Jackie, alright? There has to be a way."

To his eternal relief, the Doctor nodded.

"There's a way? Right. Tell me it. 'Cos I can't live with this."

"Mickey, slow down and think about it," the Doctor said. "You wanted to save the estate, and in doing so you lost the estate and Jackie. We have to be careful. Really careful."

"Yeah. I know. I swear I'll be careful, but I don't want Jackie to be dead, alright?"

"More than you want your friends on the estate to be dead?"

Mickey paused in horror.

"Take a look at this," the Doctor said, and pushed the laptop towards him. Mickey looked at what was displayed on the screen, his heart slowly sinking. A list of the dead.

There were a lot of them. Some names he recognized, some he didn't.

As he scrolled slowly down the page, reading each name, he remembered something. Something that had happened a long time ago- something _good_. Something important.

Once a girl had come to the estate. A sixteen-year-old girl with a baby. Her parents had thrown her out when she refused to get rid of it, and she was left to fend for herself. Her name was Emily Sutton.

Mickey had been only six or seven at the time- it had been a long time ago, but he remembered his mother, and her best friend, and a gaggle of other women- Jackie might even have been among them- going to help Emily out. They would take turns babysitting when she went out to work, and even arranged for her to go clubbing with them. Emily was so grateful, he remembered that, she used to buy them sweets as a token of gratitude and his mother gave the sweets to him- Emily had thought she'd have a terrible life and she hadn't, she _hadn't_-

And now those people, those lovely people, most of them had died. Emily's baby was called Maria. Maria Sutton. Hers was the last name on the list of the dead.

He felt like sobbing.

The Doctor watched.

"I know what you're thinking about," he said. "You're thinking about every one of those people. You're remembering every good thing they ever did and thinking about how unfair it was, how horrible. And the ones you didn't know you're wishing you did."

Mickey remembered the Doctor's war.

"'Cos that's what you did?"

He said nothing, and Mickey knew he'd never get an answer.

"What should I do?" he whispered. And then, "Is Rose alright?"

"I swore I'd bring her mother back to her," the Doctor said, and Mickey figured that was it, and he silently said goodbye to his old friends and to Maria and to those people so long ago who'd decided to do something selfless because they _could_.

"So Jackie lives and the estate still burns down?"

"Yes."

"There's no way of saving them both?"

"Mickey- sometimes there isn't." He looked so sad. He _knew_.

Mickey said nothing more- he just took the laptop back and made his way slowly to the Blue Room. It's my fault, he thought. I should have realised I can't change history, and the estate burning down was _history_. That's so stupid. I was so stupid.

_I indirectly killed Jackie, and Jackie's my friend._

He put the laptop away, and went back into the corridor. The Doctor was waiting for him there.

"You should go to bed. You humans, you need sleep."

* * *

So Mickey went to bed, and all through the night he wanted to go home.

He didn't dream about his home. He dreamt about his father. He always dreamed about his father anytime he felt terrible about anything.

_Maybe we should go out back and chuck you in the Useless Hole, huh? 'Cos you're damn useless, ain't ya? Ain't ya?_

Then his mother shouted at his father, threatening to leave him, and Mickey felt safe again as his dad slumped on a sofa and ignored them. Mickey went back to watching TV and his choose-your-own-adventure books- but suddenly he was running.

_Why was he running?_

He was four or five and dressed in a suit and there was a wedding and someone was _dead_. He thought his mother was dead but he wasn't sure. He was running away from something. It might be monsters or it might be his father. He found a church and he went in there.

There was a nice blonde woman there. She was gonna save them. She was gonna save them all-

He woke up.

He glanced around the Blue Room and remembered where he was, and what had happened. He was suddenly furious. He wished his father would stop showing up in his dreams. He'd been a bastard...

...hang on, the church...

...Rose had mentioned this story to him. She'd had trouble telling it. She'd tried to save her own father, who had been a decent bloke. In doing that she'd made these things, these dragon things called Reapers come and wipe out Earth...

Changing history was a lethal business. What if...

...no, he couldn't afford to think like that.

He got up and got changed and went out to put planet Earth at risk.

* * *

The Doctor was waiting in the console room.

"Sweet dreams?" he asked.

"No, not really."

Rose wasn't there. Mickey asked where she was.

"She's still asleep. She's had a hard time," he said softly. "Did you bring your laptop?"

Mickey went back again to get it, and the two of them spent a good while looking up Adam, and Jackie, and exactly when the terrible thing had happened. It was awful, to read about the death of a friend like that. To hear it reported in such a cold, impersonal way.

"Sam said Adam went to prison a couple of years ago..."

"Yep. Here we are. In 2036 he shot her. He'd moved to the house opposite her. He _knew _her. And he knew she was Rose's mother, so eventually he shot her."

Mickey couldn't say anything except, "So...what do we do? Do we catch Adam before he shoots her and talk him out of it?"

"Yeah, that sounds good," said Rose.

She had just come into the room. Her eyes were red from crying.

"Do that. Do anything. I want her back..."

The Doctor went and gave her a hug and Mickey went back to the laptop.

"What about Reapers?" he asked, voicing his most recent fear.

The two of them stared at him.

"How d'ya know..." the Doctor began.

"I told him," Rose said.

A pause. "Well," the Doctor said. "That's why we have to be careful, you got that, Mickey?"

"Yeah."

"So...2036, then?" And he looked at Rose.

"Yeah, 2036," she whispered.

* * *

They had a conference as soon as they landed.

"Rose," the Doctor said.

"I'm not staying," Rose said fiercely. "I want to look after you. I want to look after everyone." She was crying again.

"I know, Rose. I know."

She stood up and let him take her hands, still crying.

"Rose, it'll be fine," the Doctor said. "I _promise_, Rose. I promise I'll save Jackie."

"Me too," Mickey spoke up.

"I want things back to how they were..." This was said in a whisper.

And then all three of them went.

* * *

They went to Adam's house, having found his 2036 address on the laptop, and Mickey rang the doorbell.

Adam answered.

The look on his face was something to see. His gaze flicked through all of them and he glared.

"You're back!"

Rose opened her mouth to speak.

"Rose Tyler! It's you. Haven't seen you properly for so long. You haven't changed one bit."

"I'm sorry!" Rose yelled. "I'm sorry for what happened to you! We can put it right, okay? You gotta listen to us!"

"Too late, Rose. Everything's screwed up for me already. Screwed up for me and screwed up for you. I lead a quiet life, alright?" He grinned and made a sudden movement towards her- Mickey panicked, but the Doctor snapped his fingers, and Adam jumped back holding his forehead.

"_If you touch her_," he said. That was all he said, but somehow it make Adam move back.

"It doesn't matter," he whispered, retreating back and snapping his own fingers. "It doesn't matter, you little bitch." He was talking to Rose now, and the Doctor stepped in front of her.

"The pair of you," Adam went on. "You took everything away. And it's too late to do anything about it now, because I've lived most of my life. I went and lived the life _you_ gave me, and you _know _that, don't you?"

No-one standing on the doorstep said a word.

"Is that the answer to whatever question you had?" he said. He was about to slam the door, but Rose rushed forward, desperation on her face.

"_Adam_! Near the end of the year, you kill my mother! You hear that? You're a murderer! We came to tell you not to! You're better than that, Adam! You ain't a killer!"

Adam didn't close the door.

"_You ain't a killer_!"

The door slammed shut.

* * *

The console room was dark and Rose was crying.

"What if we made it happen," she said, "by going back again? Because I told him he wasn't a killer, he decided to be one?"

"No," the Doctor said. "How do you know?"

"Because I know."

"I could go back and talk to him alone," Mickey said, and they both looked at him.

"Why?"

He didn't want to say it, but he did anyway. "Cos...he doesn't have as much reason to hate me as he does to hate you."

The Doctor looked at him thoughtfully.

"And what makes you say that?"

Adam's words echoed in Mickey's head: _I went and lived the life you gave me._

Wasn't that exactly what he himself had done? What he'd done for a year after Rose left, and even after that? Adam had shot Jackie and burned down the estate, and Mickey _hated _him for it, but...

_But._

"When you dropped him off back at his house. What exactly did you say to him? I mean...I remember what you told me, I know what you _did_, but I dunno what you said, how you acted and that."

"I can't really remember..." Rose mumbled.

"The TARDIS would know," the Doctor said, and gave him one of those looks. "If you went into the archives."

"Well...d'ya mind if...?"

"And not just anyone gets to view the archives," the Doctor continued.

Mickey looked at him and wondered if he really had the courage to say what he wanted to say.

"I'm not just anyone anymore! I investigated you for a year and killed an alien and launched a missile and indirectly blew up 10 Downing Street, and I was on the Sycorax ship and...I helped Rose open this thing, okay? To save you! But I bet you know that."

The Doctor looked at him, then broke into a smile. "Correct answer, Mickey."


	9. he was a time traveller

Go Home  
_chapter eight- he was a time traveller_

Three minutes later and he was listening to the clip of Rose, Adam and the Doctor- the other Doctor- in Adam's house, having their last conversation.

The Doctor was no longer in the room, but Rose was, and she was uncomfortable.

"I miss his old voice..." she said softly to herself, and then seemed almost to forget that she'd said it. So Mickey did too.

He finally decided he'd heard enough, and sat back thoughtfully.

"Maybe..." he said helplessly, "if you went back to that exact point, right, and..."

"No," the Doctor said. He had returned. "That's not an option."

"Why not?"

"Because, Mickey, _that's _the sort of thing that would bring on the Reapers."

Rose shuddered.

"So..." Mickey said uncertainly, "I..." But he couldn't help saying, again, what he really wanted to say, even though it was stupid and might get him in trouble and all sorts of other things. "Why were you...just why'd you do it like that? He said sorry. He was begging an' all...and his _mum _came in! You must've messed things up for his family as well," he said, and he realised only once he'd said it just how much that was bothering him. "To have her son changed like that, like he was suddenly a different person..."

"I didn't know," Rose said glumly. "If I'd _known_..."

"But you didn't," the Doctor said. "Rose, it's not your fault."

"I have an idea," Mickey said, and they all looked at him.

"You go back to the day after you left him on Earth. And _then _you take him back and get rid of that thing."

Rose nodded- after all, she was willing to try anything at this point- but the Doctor shook his head.

"We...could," he muttered. "But the last time we went right back into Adam's past, we made something terrible happen, and I'm afraid..."

Mickey stared at him. The words _I'm afraid _just didn't seem right coming out of his mouth.

"So, no?" he guessed, letting him off the hook. "Shall I go back to Adam's house, then? Because...I _want _to talk to him. In a way."

* * *

He stood outside Adam's house, all on his own. But he was rather glad he was on his own; if Adam saw Rose again...

He wondered what she was doing right now, if she was worried for him.

He rang the doorbell.

Adam answered.

"Oh, it's _you_," he said. "Where are the others?"

"They're not here. I want to talk to you." Mickey said.

"What could you possibly say to me?"

"That I know how you felt."

Adam stared at him.

"You _what_?"

Mickey pressed on. "You know Rose? She was my girlfriend. Then the Doctor showed up and she went off with him instead, and 'cos she didn't come back for a year everyone thought I killed her."

"Really." Adam said, in a toneless voice.

"And she kept leaving with him, and I wanted her to stay on Earth with me. But she didn't. You getting all this?" But Adam didn't answer, so he went on. "He didn't like me-"

Adam interrupted him. "Come in."

"What?"

"Come on in."

Mickey came in. The house was completely uninteresting- uninteresting and bare. He sat down warily on a sofa, and Adam on the opposite one.

"You understand, do you?" Adam said. "And did you come here to tell me you understand, or come to tell me not to kill Jackie Tyler?"

"So you _are _going to kill her?" Mickey whispered. "What'd she do to you?"

But Adam just smiled insanely.

"You never know," he muttered. "what could make someone crazy."

"Right." Mickey said. Clearly, this wasn't working, and he got up to leave before Adam shot him or something. But Adam held him back.

"So...d'ya hate him?" he said. "You must do after what he did to you. I've got plans...I could use you, you know things-"

Mickey didn't even think about it. He just jerked away in disgust.

"No!"

Adam glared at him, a pathetic sort of child's glare, and Mickey suddenly felt _sorry _for him.

"You're not going to kill Jackie Tyler," he said, "because Jackie Tyler's done nothing to you."

"But Rose Tyler has."

And Mickey finally lost his temper.

"You're such an idiot! Why d'ya want to hurt Rose, or anyone anymore? You could've done anything else! You could have used that thing in your head to do something useful! I dunno what, but..."

The _but _was the catch, but he carried on anyway.

"Why didn't you try and prove that you _weren't_, you know, useless like they thought? You could have done!"

He stopped yelling and the room was silent. He was surprised. He couldn't quite believe he'd done that. It was weird...

Adam was staring at him.

"You'd just let them get away with it?" he hissed. "The Doctor and Rose ruined your life and you didn't- you didn't do anything about it? You didn't fight back? You've got no right to lecture me, you coward."

Mickey's mind went oddly blank. He felt a bit like he'd just been hit. And through the blankness he could think of just one thing to say:

"Adam. Don't kill Jackie. Please."

"Oh, I won't." Adam said, but his eyes were glittering madly and Mickey knew he'd screwed this up. He turned and ran out of the house, and Adam did not follow.

* * *

When he was a little away from the house, an idea suddenly came to him. An idea so blindingly obvious he couldn't believe it had taken him this long to think of it.

He went to a phone booth, and dialled the police.

"Hello? Listen. There's this guy and I think he's gonna do something stupid. I think he's gonna kill someone."

"Do you have any proof?" came a bored voice on the other end.

He couldn't very well say _I know 'cos I'm a time traveller- _so he had to try and explain. "He's slightly crazy-"

"And?"

"Well, I just think he will- in fact, I'm _convinced _he will-"

"That's not proof, sir. Now stop wasting our time."

The person at the other end hung up. Mickey stared in horror- surely things couldn't have changed that much? Surely people weren't this _stupid_ now? It was only the year 2038...

Everything _had _changed that much.

In despair, he tried again. He got a different person but the same answer. No-one cared.

No-one cared that Jackie got _shot _soon, shot by Adam. No-one except him and Rose and the Doctor. All his plans had failed, so unless someone else came up with something brilliant...Jackie would die. And then, later, hundreds of people on the Powell Estate would die.

And he couldn't do a thing about it.

* * *

Back to the TARDIS, and the people waiting for him there.

"It didn't work," he muttered to Rose, who'd come running down the corridor to meet him. "It didn't work. He's insane. Oh God, we need to think of something."

Rose started crying again.

Mickey desperately tried to come up with something.

"We go to...200whatever," he told the Doctor, who was standing silent nearby, "and grab Adam before he does anything stupid."

"Yeah," Rose said, nodding frantically. "Yeah...yeah, something like that."

"Or...before he shoots Jackie, we grab him, or grab Jackie...we get Jackie out of the way before she gets shot..."

"There's a risk," the Doctor said.

"Of what? Reapers?"

"No. Of something else going wrong somewhere. The estate burned down, and trying to save it lead to Jackie's death, and unless we're careful, so very careful, saving Jackie could lead somewhere worse..."

There was a terrible silence. Rose had stopped crying. Somewhere during that short conversation, Mickey realised, she'd got her determination back. She was going to save Jackie if it killed her.

"Right," Rose said fiercely, and the Doctor looked at her and smiled, as if glad to have Rose back again, even in this dire situation. Or something. Mickey didn't know. "_Right_. We're going to go back to 2038, and see what changed. If anything did. We've got to be careful and to keep going back to check, that's being careful, right?"

"Yes," the Doctor said simply. "We'll do that."

* * *

All three of them stepped out into 2038.

It _did _look different. It wasn't as destroyed! Some of the buildings were still standing! Mickey's heart leapt- they'd changed something. They'd changed something after all. Maybe Jackie wasn't dead, and maybe no-one had died in the fire.

Maybe.

He looked out for Sam. Sam wasn't there. What if _he _was dead? No...

"It's changed," Rose said. "My God, we changed something. Some of it's still standing."

"Yes," the Doctor said thoughtfully.

"Mickey, what'd you say to Adam?" Rose demanded. "What exactly did you say? Cos...I think you've done it! If the estate's still standing, maybe he never shot Mum! "Um, I told him..." He felt so embarassed all of a sudden. "I told him 'bout...you leaving me."

"...Oh..."

"...and he said maybe I should stay and help him, and I said no, and he called me a coward. And then I said something like, why didn't you prove that you _weren't_ useless after all...and I said don't kill Jackie and he said yes. But I didn't think..." He was running out of breath. "I didn't think he actually _would _not shoot her!"

"You must have done it!" Rose almost shouted. "Oh my God, you must have!" But before she hugged him, practically crushing him with overwhelming gratitude, Mickey caught a glimpse of the Doctor's face- and he looked pretty devastated.

"We don't know about Jackie yet," he spoke up. "We don't have any proof."

Rose let go of Mickey. "But..."

"We need to find out, Rose...I'm so sorry, but we might not have done it yet."

Rose's face fell. "But we will?" she whispered.

"We will."

In the silence, Mickey noticed something. Someone. "Oi. Sam's over there."

Sure enough, he was. _He _looked different too. Cleaner and better dressed. He clearly wasn't living in the wreckage anymore.

Mickey decided to go for it.

"Hey, mate," he called to Sam. "D'ya mind if we ask you a question?"

Sam hesitated and slowly came towards them. He looked at each of them in turn. "Yeah?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Have you ever heard of Adam Mitchell?" Mickey asked.

Sam gave him a very odd look, and said. "Yeah. He burned down the estate."

"Right- I knew that," Mickey said hastily. "Er, is there anything else...what else did he do?"

"Well, he had to escape from prison to burn down the estate." And Sam was backing away a little now, as if spooked.

"Yeah, um, what'd he go to prison for?"

"Shooting someone," Sam said, and Rose gave a little sob and Mickey's heart sank. Sam looked at Rose, puzzled, and then said to Mickey. "Um...it's creepy..."

"What?"

"You look _just like_...this bloke...and it's so weird you wanted to know about Adam..."

And he mumbled a goodbye and left.

"What?" Mickey said aloud. The last two times he'd met Sam, he hadn't been anywhere near so freaked out about him cropping up, and had accepted his story about really being called Ricky, and hadn't even considered that he might be Mickey from the estate who mysteriously hadn't been around for years...so _why_?

What was going on? And had _he _done it?

Rose was drying her eyes.

"So he shot someone..." she said, and hiccuped and started again. "What do we do now?"

"We do our research," the Doctor said, and he put his arm around her like he always did. Mickey felt oddly relieved to see that, and he had no idea why. Maybe because...here was someone who was always going to look after her. And even though he'd always thought that was _his _job, looking after her...

...he wasn't jealous.

"Mickey," the Doctor said, "we need your laptop again," And he gave this bizarre, really rather sad smile- as if he'd guessed what Mickey was thinking, and was proud but strangely guilty.

* * *

Back in the TARDIS, Rose returned to her room.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said tearfully. "I thought I was stronger than this."

"You _are_, Rose," he answered. And then, mysteriously, "Much stronger than me." He let her go. Mickey watched her walk away and then watched the flickering screen of the laptop.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

"Anything. Any information. Sam said he shot _someone_. He didn't say who."

They went through pages and pages of information. They read Adam's name a thousand times. They found out more about him than they had ever wanted to know. His father had shot himself. He'd dropped out of university. He'd vainly tried to get his girlfriend to come back.

Mickey felt angry. Not angry at anything in particular, just at the world. At the bizarre and frightening situations it threw at you, and the way it made you _want _them. Why was he _doing_ this? Why was he sitting in a time machine checking if one of his best friends was dead?

Sam hadn't said who...

And then they found out who.


	10. page 95

Go Home  
_chapter nine- page 95_

They sat there looking at the laptop screen, stupified.

"That makes no _sense_," Mickey finally said flatly.

The Doctor said nothing.

"But- in 2036- I've been to 203_8_- I couldn't have..."

Still nothing. It was as if some part of him had shut down. Mickey also felt like shutting down. This was..._crazy_.

He tried to say it and found he couldn't; his mind was spinning and all he could think of was Rose in the other room crying. Then the world as he knew it came back to him again and he said-

"Adam shoots _me_?"

"Yes," the Doctor whispered, "Adam shoots you."

This seemed impossible- as impossible as living plastic or aliens in his kitchen or a time-travelling blue box. He thought of Rose. He thought of...

"Jackie. He doesn't kill Jackie? Just me?"

"No, he doesn't kill Jackie."

Mickey couldn't think of a thing to say, and hoped beyond all hope that Rose wouldn't come in and ask what had happened. How could he...

"And the estate? What happens to the estate? When we saw it it was all..."

"I don't know what happens to the estate. But whatever it was it looked like most of it survived."

Mickey shook his head in disbelief. This just wasn't sinking in. "I'm...look, I'm gonna go to my room..."

He turned to go down the corridor, waiting for the fear and the panic to come. But it didn't. "What about Rose..."

"I'll tell her," the Doctor said.

* * *

But he didn't.

Mickey went into his room, the Blue Room, and listened hard as he could to the noises of the place. He didn't hear footsteps; no-one was going into Rose's room.

He figured he ought to do something to take his mind off..._that_. Off everything. Off the fact that he should be- oh god- _dead_. He played video games, and read the slightly stupid books he'd brought with him, and then got bored of them, and then...

...started to panic.

He sunk to the floor of the Blue Room and waited. He heard footsteps, at long last. Someone was coming. But they didn't go to Rose's room- they knocked on his door.

"I have to talk to you, Mickey," the Doctor said, in a quiet voice. Mickey opened the door.

"Yeah? What is it?" he asked, and realised he was expecting good news. He'd been silly to think that he'd have to...there'd be another way..._there was always another way_.

"This is entirely my fault," the Doctor said, coming into the room downcast, like Death in human's clothes. "I was asked once whether I'd rather be a coward or killer. I chose coward. Very stupid of me."

Mickey didn't know what to say. He _was _panicking now. He was on his own and no-one could help him.

"If I'd known," the Doctor said, "If I'd _known_..."

"Well, you couldn't have known," Mickey said, desperate to say _something_. "No-one knows that sort of stuff."

The Doctor shook his head. He looked around the Blue Room, and went to the books and picked one of them up- a choose-your-own adventure book, a present from Josh years and years ago. "I should have known." he said firmly. "That's what I do. Know things. Know so many things it bursts my brain." He flipped the book around and, for no reason Mickey could see, read out the blurb. "_Your girlfriend has run off to Antartica with another man. You must win her back, fighting off giant zombie Martians along the way_," He lowered the book, and for one split second seemed normal again. "Who _writes _this stuff?"

Mickey shrugged.

The Doctor sighed, and looked at the door, as if looking beyond it to where Rose was. Then he turned back to Mickey, and there was something like begging in his eyes...but not begging him to go out and get himself killed. Something else, something like _I'm so so sorry..._

"Time, space, everything," the Doctor murmured, "it's like a big choose-your-own adventure book." He flicked through the pages carefully. "I known more of the answers than you do, and a lot more of the questions. I know you'll do _that _on page 56, and go for choice _b _on page 177, but you won't know the answer to the question on page 95, and neither will I."

He stopped flicking through the pages, and the room was quiet apart from his voice.

"That's where we are now, Mickey. Page 95."

Mickey thought about Jackie, and about Trisha and Shireen and all his friends on the estate, and how Rose's leaving with the Doctor had brought them all together in the first place and then...

...he thought of Jackie being shot and no-one caring, and the estate burning down and the sounds of flames and screaming. And then he thought of Rose. And his family, as well. Who was going to tell them, what was going to happen, what should he _do_...?

"You don't have to do it," the Doctor said.

"If I don't," Mickey guessed, scared for everything he had ever had to be scared for, "will _you_?"

The Doctor nodded, and in his mind's eye Mickey saw Rose returning to him that cold day not so long ago, and crying and willing to die to get back to her home. And the more he thought the more he knew- and he could barely believe it, barely believe he was doing this.

He took a deep breath, and said. "Alright, then. You take me to 2036, and you leave me there."

The Doctor gave him this look of genuine despair.

Mickey repeated his descision. "Take me to 2036. That's my answer to the question on page 95, alright? Take me there."

Previous  
Next


	11. the most powerful and hopeless

Go Home  
_chapter ten- the most powerful and hopeless of them all_

Rose was fast asleep, and Mickey was relieved beyond all reason. By the time she woke up, he'd be out of here.

"We're in 2036," the Doctor said. "Tonight, Adam shoots Jackie Tyler. But he's not going to."

"No-" Mickey said.

"Because he gets me instead," the Doctor said firmly. He reached into his pocket and handed Mickey a key. "This is the key to the TARDIS. Rose has one too. You and her are going to fly out of here, and go and live your lives. I said all this to Rose, a lifetime ago, and it would have worked then if not for you and Jackie. So this time, you make sure she doesn't come back. She deserves better than having to risk her life to save me. This was my doing, and I'm going to put it right."

"It wasn't your doing!" If he'd been there when they'd abandoned Adam, he'd _never _have said that. So why was he saying it now? "That was, y'know, the other you and everything."

The Doctor almost laughed. "Yes. The other me. Can you fathom that? People change- _you've_ changed, but _you're_ still the same. You're not a completely different person, you've just had things...rearranged. It was _me_."

"But you didn't know what Adam would do!"

"Nope. In a perfect world," he said, "he'd have used his newfound knowledge to make the world a better place. The year 2012 is a world where people know aliens exist, thanks to the Sycorax...so surely Adam Mitchell having gone with an alien to the future to get a implant stuck in his head isn't too much of a stretch. Harriet Jones would have loved to meet him, somewhere in an alternate timeline."

The mention of Harriet Jones jolted Mickey's memory.

"You said you never gave second chances," he said, unsure of where he was going with this.

The Doctor grinned wolfishly. "No second chances?" he said. "As long as you live, you have a second chance. As long as you live you can undo what you failed at. Every moment's a second chance. But many don't realise and most don't care- like Adam. So," he said, suddenly almost businesslike, "I know you'll look after Rose. You've learned to do that. So thank you." He took something else out of his pocket and handed it over. "This is a hologram. For Rose. You have to give it to her."

"What does it say?"

"It says 'Have a good life.'"

And Mickey wished Rose was here to give the answer to that- but she wasn't, so he'd have to.

"Well, she won't. Not without you. She loves you. She can't lose you again. Don't you _get _that? I told you what I was gonna do, alright?"

The Doctor said nothing.

"You can't go now, cos it's happened already! _You _stay and _I _go and Jackie and everyone lives. If you go, then something will probably screw up and everyone dies on the estate, or something sick like that. And you _know _that, right?"

"All I know is that I left Adam in the year 2012. Me alone. You weren't there. You had nothing to do with it."

Mickey just looked at him, trying to think of something to say and coming up with absolutely nothing. He was cursing himself for this when the Doctor spoke, in a strange voice.

"I asked you, 'Where to next?' and you could have said hundreds of things. You could have asked for Mars or Neptune or the Ice Age. You could have asked to meet Shakespeare or to watch a star explode or to walk on frozen waves thousands of feet high. But you didn't ask for those. You asked to see your home."

Silence. "Er, yeah," Mickey said helplessly, at last. "You'd have done the same, wouldn't you? For your home? I mean...if there was a war and all..."

"I couldn't see it. It's not possible anymore," the Doctor said. "But that's not important right now."

"Yeah, it is. Look...you know what it's like, then, right? To know that everyone's dead and you could have saved them? Your friends and everyone?"

The craziest conversation of his life came to an end at that. He just put the stuff the Doctor had given him down, and started walking towards the door, and...that was it. He turned around and saw the Doctor standing at the console, the most powerful and hopeless of them all.

Then he closed the door and went out into the night.

* * *

He went halfway down the road, and then he sat down on a bench and put his head in his hands. This wasn't right. Any minute now and he would freak out and run, run away, go live out the rest of his life somewhere else- but he couldn't. He wouldn't.

He understood Rose now. He'd always loved her, but now for the first time he _understood _her. Understood why she'd gone in the first place, but most of all understood why she'd gone back.

He got up off the bench then- he was fully expecting Rose or the Doctor to come tearing after him. They'd make him go back, he was sure.

And it'd be so easy to go back, so easy for this to be someone else's problem, so why wasn't he going back? Just because he couldn't take what would happen to Rose if the man she loved died? Or _something_? It was so horribly complicated, and then he pictured Jackie getting shot, and Maria Sutton dying in the fire with countless others, and Sam wandering about in a pile of dust and bricks, and it wasn't complicated anymore.

As he started to walk, he heard someone shouting his name. He knew who it was right away- it was Rose, a terrified Rose. He stopped, because he couldn't run from her.

"_You can't_!" she yelled.

He couldn't think of a single thing to say. He couldn't say _look, basically it's either him or me, alright? _because that would be forcing her to make a choice she couldn't possibly make, and he couldn't say...he just couldn't say _anything_.

"You can't," Rose repeated. "There has to be another way."

"This _is _the other way! Listen, right, since I wanted to save the estate it's my fault Jackie died. So..."

"_It's not_!"

"It is sort of."

Rose shook her head, and suddenly Mickey pictured Adam right now, going to load his gun. What the hell could be going through his mind, right now? And Jackie would be just sitting there, thinking about her daughter, probably...

"You said once...something about not giving up, and making a stand and saying no. I don't want Jackie to die, or the people on the estate, or you or the Doctor. So I dunno what to do! Except say no."

Rose stared at him, tears in her eyes.

"You..." she said desperately... "You _can't_."

Mickey remembered the story about Rose's dad and the Reapers, and wondered what _he'd _said when he knew he'd have to jump in front of a car.

"I'm sorry, Rose. I'm so sorry, I just dunno what else to do..."

He kissed her on the lips and looked at her and then started running. And she didn't do anything, because she didn't know what else to do, either. Neither of them had any power, neither of them could make this situation better-

-he thought he heard Rose yelling _love you _after him, so he shouted it back, even though he couldn't be sure...

...and he kept running.


	12. end of the road

Go Home  
_chapter eleven- end of the road_

He ran and ran and he knew Rose and probably the Doctor were following him now, racing after him as fast as they could, and he knew they'd probably do something stupid. Rose especially. He ran past people on the streets, past cars and broken lamposts and all sorts of things both new and broken, and reached Jackie's house.

Not letting himself think about it, he ran around the back and pounded on the door. No answer. Maybe she was afraid to open it, afraid he was a burglar or a murderer...or a monster...or anything. If she didn't answer, what would he do? Break the window and terrify her? Where was Adam right now? Why couldn't he breathe properly? Who was he most scared for, himself or Jackie? And why, why, _why_...

The door creaked open.

Jackie was standing there.

It wasn't Jackie as he knew her. It was Jackie in her late sixties, Jackie with grey hair, Jackie with no makeup, Jackie who'd had her life ruined. Jackie staring at him, gawping at him, as if she was looking at a ghost...

"_Mickey_?" she said in astonishment, and reached out a hand. "Where's Rose?"

"Rose is fine-" Mickey said, and raced into the house uninvited. "-but you're not, right? You're in danger." He stared desperately around the house, and then realised that there wasn't a single answer in here. What could he do, what could he do, what could he _do_? He was sure there was another way- get Jackie out and to the TARDIS before Adam came, maybe? That seemed sensible. Now he'd have to act fast-

"In danger? Why? How come?" Jackie asked, and her voice was still mostly the same. It was so weird, hearing an old woman speak with Jackie's voice. "Mickey, what's happening? Where's Rose-" She was about to freak out, Mickey knew, so he cut her off.

"Jackie! In a few minutes you're supposed to be dead! But we're gonna change that, alright? You have to come with me, right now!" He glanced at the door frantically; where was Adam? Maybe he wouldn't come. Maybe something had changed. Maybe he was saved. Somehow...

Jackie stared at him in fear.

"Oh God, Mickey..." she began, and then there was a hammering on the front door.

It might not be Adam, Mickey thought desperately. It might be Rose and the Doctor...but no, it had to be Adam. He knew how this story went. Or how it started, at least. It started with Adam, and finished with the burning buildings...

"Right! Jackie, come on! We need to get out of the back door, and then somewhere safe. Alright, Jackie?" He grabbed her hand and pretty much dragged her through the kitchen, and he _knew_, he knew Adam was going round to the back of the house and was going to catch them there, he _knew _what was going to happen because he was a time traveller...and he was scared, so scared...

They burst into the back garden and Adam was there, gun in hand.

Time stood still, or slowed down and gave him a few more seconds. Mickey panicked, because right now he could think of only one way out and that was killing Adam. But there was nothing to kill Adam _with_- Mickey had no gun- and besides, he wasn't a killer. Never had been.

What was he going to _do_?

He shoved Jackie back towards the house and shouted at her to run, and she understood and she did. Mickey saw her race out of sight. And Adam laughed hysterically and Mickey remembered that Adam had once been an ordinary teenager, and stupid like him. He was scared, so scared he was shaking, he wanted to run away- he was _terrified_- but he stepped forward anyway.

"Adam," he began, "Jackie-"

He was going to say _Jackie never did anything to you, don't kill her, Adam, don't kill either of us, you're throwing everything away-_ but he never got that far. Because Adam shot him.

* * *

The Doctor and Rose came tearing up to the house and saw it happen, and Rose screamed and she tried to run out but the Doctor held her back. Adam shook and stared around like he couldn't believe what he'd just done, and he looked so scared and he backed away and he didn't kill Jackie, because Mickey had told Jackie to run away and she had. She'd run to her neighbour's house. And now lights were starting to turn on and people were staring out of windows...

"Mum," Rose whispered, and she tried to run out but the Doctor held her back.

"No. Not now. Because if you go find her now, this will be the first time you've seen her in forty or so years...she'll have lived half her life without you. But we can go back and see her again and she won't have. Rose?"

Rose was looking at Adam. She looked at him and looked at the scene before her and sunk to the floor.

"I..." she said hysterically, and then she cried again. She'd been through too much, she couldn't think straight, and she didn't know what to do.

"Rose," the Doctor said simply, and he took both her hands and helped her up.

"What do we do now?" Rose asked, trying to wipe her face. "What do we do? He can't be dead!"

Sirens started to wail in the distance.

"Say he's not dead!"

But the Doctor couldn't say anything to her, couldn't reassure her, couldn't do a thing, because he _was _dead.

Adam had killed him.

* * *

They stayed long enough to see Adam being bundled into the back of a police van, and Jackie being interviewed-she had to lie, she didn't tell them who Mickey really was, she said she didn't know what had happened and it seemed her heart was absolutely breaking- and lights on all over the street and people all over the garden and general chaos and it was _horrible_- then they went back to their home, and both of them were lost.

"I'm going to have to tell his mum he's dead," Rose said, and she cried and cried and the Doctor held her and blamed himself, but he didn't voice his thoughts for they would make things worse. All he could do now was look after Rose.

Nothing else mattered at the moment, except her and the events of the past hour.

"What about the estate?" she asked through her tears. "He saved it, didn't he? Somehow."

"Yes, Rose. I think he did."

Rose let go of him then, because she had to, and walked slowly down the corridor and to the Blue Room. She looked around at it, at the books and laptop and Mickey's stuff on the floor.

"I should have done it," the Doctor said. "If we'd gotten there ten seconds earlier I would have, Rose."

"No...I wouldn't have let ya..." That was one thing she was certain of, and the thought of making that choice, having to choose between Mickey and the Doctor made her feel sick. She would never have been able to do it, and Mickey had taken the choice away from her.

"I know," the Doctor said.

Rose reached down to the floor and started to pick things up. She didn't know why and she didn't care. "Mickey's mum..." she began, a lump in her throat. "She's...she's nice...we have to tell her the truth..."

"We will."

"She's the loveliest woman you could imagine. When I was little this sixteen-year-old had a baby and got chucked out of her house, and Mickey's mum looked after her...oh god, _it's not fair_...horrible things happen to good people..."

"Yes," the Doctor said. One word that pretty much said it all.

They made their way to 2006- the Doctor took care of the travelling, while Rose sat in the Blue Room. She couldn't cry anymore, she'd run out of tears.

* * *

She lay on the bed.

She drifted in and out of an almost-sleep, and the almost-dreams taunted her.

_It was 2001, or maybe 2002, or a long time ago at least, and they were sitting by the Useless Hole and they were kissing and nothing could touch them, and he asked- since she'd dropped out of school now, was she going to go away? Move somewhere else? And she said no. She wouldn't go away..._

_I won't go away either then, he said. I'll never leave you._

She sat up and got out of the bed. _No. _She wasn't going to let this happen. There had to be a loophole, somewhere. Something that would let him live.

There _had _to.

But then, would Jackie and the people on the estate live, or die? She didn't know, and there was no way of finding out, and Mickey had _known _that his actions would save hundreds of people. There was nothing she could do.

Except wish things were different.

But they weren't.

_It was 2001, or maybe 2002, or a long time ago at least, and they were sitting by the Useless Hole and nothing could stay the same forever and it was all over now..._


	13. the fall of adam and epilogue

Go Home  
_chapter twelve- the fall of adam_

Adam wandered the streets of the Powell Estate, disguised under cheap plastic surgery, matches and lighter fluid in hand. Once he did this, he was sure, he'd have closure. He'd wouldn't be a killer anymore. Rose's home would be gone and it'd be her fault and wherever she was, she would _know _that. Just like her stupidity had gotten her boyfriend killed.

He didn't like to think about that much, though.

But in fact, if he had to be honest, he'd never stopped thinking about that. He should have shot Jackie instead, but at the back of his mind he knew Mickey had gone there specially to save Jackie's life, and he'd gotten exactly what he wanted, which was a bullet through the head and Jackie's life saved.

But _why_- why on earth had he been so willing to save Rose's mother, and save Rose pain, when he'd been abandoned by her? He didn't get it.

He walked over to the flat where Rose Tyler had once lived, to start the biggest fire of them all. But his mind was preoccupied with his past murder, and he wasn't looking where he was going.

He walked into the Useless Hole.

He was stunned. He lay at the bottom helplessly for a few seconds, and then tried to get out. But he couldn't. And no-one heard when he screamed, because they were too busy evacuating the flats. And as Adam waited, livid, for the police to find him and get him out and arrest him, there wasn't nearly as much fire that night as there should have been.

* * *

The day after the fire was sunny but cold. Countless people were milling around the ruined estate, many of them reporters but most of them residents or former residents. Trisha and Shireen were among them.

Trisha stared out, and sighed, and reached into her pocket for Mickey's flat key. She had kept the key all these years. She had kept it even after she had married her husband and bought a nice house for both of them, and recieved her own key and the future that went with it.

Jackie had contacted her, and explained what had happened. She had cried for a long time, and decided never to forget him. She never had.

Neither had Shireen.

"God, it looks even worse from down here," she said, and took a drag on her cigarette. She was nearly fifty and still smoked. "I used to hate this place, but, christ. 'Mazing no-one was killed. Have they caught who did it yet?"

"They have someone," Trisha said.

"Is it...Mitchell? The one who...?"

"Yes. Him," she said quietly.

There was silence between the two of them. All the other people were still talking- talking and taking pictures and discussing how they'd survived.

Maria Sutton approached them, her two kids trailing along behind her. All of them looked like they needed sleep.

"Trisha? Shireen?" Maria called. "I haven't seen you in so long!"

Although they had only vaguely known each other, the three of them shared a hug. Maria, Trisha was quite sure, could use one after what she'd just been through. Then the kids sat by the car and the adults talked about the events of the previous night.

"I guess I'll have to find another place," Maria said lightly. "Still- I'm lucky to be alive, really." She sighed and looked up at the flat. "Me and the kids."

Assorted people in uniform were beginning to shoo the crowds away now. Shireen rolled her eyes and stubbed out her cigarette.

"Well," she said glumly, "the estate's gone. What do you suppose we do now?"

Trisha looked down at the flat key she clutched in her hand. "We rebuild," she said. She looked up at where Mickey's flat had been, and repeated it.

"We rebuild."

THE END

_epilogue_

Rose was in the Blue Room, tearfully removing all the things inside it. The laptop and the DVDs and the books. Mickey's mother had asked for them.

The Doctor was helping her, and she was so glad she was with him, but...

If only she could have kept them _both_. If only.

Her pink Plutonian necklace was round her neck.

As she picked up the books, the choose-your-own adventure novel fell to the floor and landed open, the last page on display.

_CONGRATULATIONS! _it read. _You've saved all your friends and defeated the villain. But surely you could find a way of making things turn out even better- just go back to the beginning and play the game again._

_You get a second chance!_


End file.
